The present invention relates to the field of communications and more particularly to radio communications.
In conventional radio telephone communications systems, control, voice, and data information from a mobile switching center is received at a radio base station via a carrier protocol such as a T1, E1, or J1 carrier protocol. Each carrier protocol can support a fixed number of channels or timeslots for communicating control, voice, and data information between the mobile switching center and a radio base station. Within a radio base station, the control, voice, and data information from the mobile switching center is received at a control board interface, and portions of this data can be communicated with other base station control boards and/or other base station devices using a bus interface of the same type as that used for the carrier from the mobile switching center.
For example, a conventional radio base station that communicates with a mobile switching center using the T1 carrier protocol generally will also use the T1 carrier protocol for the bus interface between control boards. The carrier protocol used to support communications between a mobile switching center and a radio base station may be dictated by commercial availability, and conventional base stations generally use this same protocol for the internal bus interface. In the United States, for example, T1 lines are generally commercially available and are thus generally used to couple radio base stations and mobile switching centers. Accordingly, the T1 carrier protocol is used for radio base station internal buses as all control board interfaces support the same carrier protocol.